The Greater Slovenia Within the Panslavist Connection (Slovenians and South Slavs in the Concepts ofBresnitz von Sydacoff)

Abstract

Philipp-Franz Bresnitz von Sydacoff (1868-f) was a conservatively oriented publicist, who, before World War I, saw the last hope for the Habsburg Monarchy in the Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand. In the foreign political context, Sydacoff believed that the Monarchy had a great role to play in the East and in the Balkans. In 1899 he wrote a book on the Panslavist agitation and the South Slavic movement in Austro-Hungary. Sydacoff emphasised the "Habsburg burden" with regard to cultivating the European Southeast, similarly as in the colonial forces the opinion of the "burden of the white man", who had to "help" the primitive peoples, was established. He saw the Yugoslav movement as another manifestation of the Panslavist Russia. The propagators of the Austrian idea in the Balkans were supposedly the Catholic Croatians, while he ascribed the Serbians with anti-Habsburg tendencies, which they wanted to accomplish with the Russian assistance. In this system Slovenians had a negative role. Supposedly The Young Czech movement, with the aid of Serbians, would assist the Slovenian national movement in order to set up a bridge between South and North Slavs and break apart the Monarchy.